We had the opportunity to test the remake of a cult game from 1994: System Shock. Does the FPS have the shoulders strong enough to match the expectations of 2023? This is what we are going to check together through this test.
The concept of an AI going crazy and slaughtering a space station full of people doesn’t sound so original in 2023, but in 1994 it was still pretty ambitious. With the success of titles like Bioshock in the 2000s, the developers thought in 2015 that it was time to bring an updated version of SystemShock. And in view of the success encountered at the time, Nightdive Studios wanted to push the vice and the concept even further by simply developing a remake of which you can find the big work below, the basic game being quite ugly. What is this classic sci-fi video game worth with this new form?
The return of a great SF classic
In System Shock you play as a hacker lost aboard Citadel Station, where a mad AI called SHODAN has unleashed chaos. As in Bioshock, the cause of the ambient madness is not immediately known. There are corpses and blood everywhere, and the few survivors look like scary zombies with red eyes. Worse, the station’s entire security system (cameras, turrets, etc.) is against you to constantly put you in misery and pressure. Unlike some modern remakes, like the great work done on Resident Evil, the FPS is a remake that could be described as old-school. Yes, the game is more beautiful and corresponds more to the standards of 2023, yes the gameplay is modernized, but the whole thing is almost a copy and paste of what it was in 1994. Fans will not lose their habits since the layout of each zone and the placement of the enemies is strictly identical. Problem, the game also keeps the defects of its elder.
The combat is reviewed and corrected with greater fluidity and better speed, but as in its day, there remains a black spot in the adventure. For a SF game, you expect to have in your hands weapons with a punch, like the famous Pulse Rifle of the American Colonial Marines in the film Aliens. But this is not the case. Most of the time, it feels more like shooting a paintball than a real lethal arsenal. Like in the heyday of the FPS way doom, the enemies darken on us and we are content to strafe in the heap without great finesse, but with less fun because of the lack of sensations. Too bad, but it finally respects the base material quite well. On the action side, there are also the famous hacking sessions that allow you to enter the computer system a bit like the Matrix via a space shooter in which you have to connect “digital nodes” by shooting them. The environment also changes totally with a stylistic representation in the purest SF tradition of the 90s when it comes to representing computing. These moments are particularly enjoyable and allow you to take a break from the sometimes suffocating and frightening exploration of the space station.
Far from doing the bare minimum, one of the welcome improvements is a modernized inventory system. Indeed, in the SystemShock original, its management was a tedious task that could harm the experience. In the remake, the inventory is very largely optimized and the player can quickly exchange weapons and objects without having to interrupt the game. A very good point which makes the adventure more fluid, even if ammunition is rare, which already limits not bad overall clutter. Once again, this is not a classic FPS where opponents are chained together. Combat is not the central pillar of SystemShockit is the component of a whole unlike a Doom (to name only him).
The mix of genres
The primary objective of this SystemShock Remake going to be exploring the station. As in dead space, you’ll have to piece together what happened from the snippets of information you can find everywhere. This adds a heavy atmosphere that promotes fear and anxiety. Especially since the entire sound part is revised to improve immersion. We hear a noise that resonates in the distance in a corridor or a cry of terror that will give you goosebumps and we stay there waiting 2 good minutes without doing anything in a room without light. Because if the game is not strictly speaking a horror game it has many components. No jumpscares on the program but rather a stifling atmosphere worthy of a Alien the Eighth Passenger.
To navigate between the different areas and progress, there are plenty of puzzles to solve, including finding codes for doors, reconnecting wires to run power the right way, or accessing data to find the right route. System Shock offers many challenges and even if there is no need to be experienced in the genre, some give a hard time. Pretty much the same puzzles from 1994 but in versions that seem even more twisted than they did back then. It is indeed not uncommon to bang your head against the walls if you are not used to this type of mechanics. It takes about 7 hours of play to get to the end in a straight line, more if you want to explore everything. Knowing that one of the other faults concerns the catastrophic orientation… Without a real benchmark system, the novice player who does not know the original title risks going around in circles for a very long time without really knowing where to go. The objectives are not clear and we are a little on our own. Difficult to know if this is an element apart from the gameplay to transcribe the loss of bearings in a space station or if this is a simple error in terms of level design.
A unique game
The puzzles and exploration aren’t too difficult for the most part, but if you approach the game as a pure FPS, you’re likely to get frustrated. Going headlong will do you no good and curiosity is a consubstantial element to your success. The pleasure of SystemShock It’s also about being stuck alone on a space station, and you won’t be able to solve everything with your Rambo-style weapons anyway. It often happens to pass in front of the same door or the same wall 10 times without seeing a button or a control panel that seemed obvious to find. In this, this remake is a truly unique game that forces you to be curious and understand your environment to evolve over the course of the adventure.
Now what about the graphic and technical part? System Shock Remake is pretty but you shouldn’t be too fussy about the details. Sometimes the textures lack precision and it feels like playing a game from the 2010s. The advantage is that it runs flawlessly on any machine and is very fluid regardless of the modernity of your graphics card. We will also highlight the different lighting effects that honor all the SF films of the 80s and 90s. At the crossroads of worlds between Alien And blade runner. It’s nice without piercing your retina as could have done Bioshock at the time. It’s not what we could trivially call a technically lazy remake, but some efforts could have been made to make the whole thing a little more worthy of the productions of the 2020s. It remains in any case quite appreciable to discover or rediscover the experience years later. The enemies are quite scary and well done compared to those of 1994 and you can see the big effort to bring some credibility to the whole bestiary and the space station.
